However you feel about Valentines Day, it’s hard to avoid turning your thoughts to love at least once on Feb. 14. This week the Fitzhugh did the same, and found a truly touching love story in the process.
Although she’s been gone for two decades, Don Hayes still remembers the love of his life.
Her name was Georgina Andrews, and she, like him, grew up in Banff, back when it was still a small town of less than 2,000 people.
Hayes, now in his late 70s, speaks slowly and deliberately, often pausing for long stretches between thoughts.
Sitting down for breakfast at the Alpine Summit Senior’s Lodge Feb. 10, he recalled with fondness falling for Georgina when he was a young man.
When he was 15 he took a job driving a bus for Brewster, who hired the youngster to fill gaps left in the workforce by the war. His job was to drive the bus from the Mount Royal Hotel to the Sunshine Village ski hill.
Georgina worked as a housekeeper there, and Hayes would take any opportunity he could to see her. The two of them just clicked, he explained, and it didn’t take him long to start falling in love.
“She was very independent, but we just clicked. I couldn’t say that she would do something and I would do something else: usually it was a shared thing.”
Eventually Hayes started taking her into Banff on dates, driving the hour to and from Sunshine to pick her up and drop her off each time.
Sometimes they would catch movies, or in the winter skate on the Vermillion Lakes. “She was a hell of a good skater,” Hayes remembered.
But other times, when the cost of movies was too high, they would do a myriad of other things—Hayes kept the memories of how the couple spent those days to himself. Instead, he lapsed into a long silence, giving a small, inward chuckle as he gazed into the distance.
Over the days they spent together in Banff, the two grew closer, and before long they were thinking of starting a family.
“One thing lead to another thing, and we wanted to get married. [But] my mother did not agree with who I picked, and her mother did not agree who she picked,” Hayes said.
With mock exasperation he explained that he never knew exactly why their parents didn’t give their blessing, only that he and Georgina were determined to tie the knot anyway.
Finally, after years of romance, the young couple’s parents finally gave their respective blessings.
What made them finally give in?
“Because we were running away if they didn’t,” Hayes said matter-of-factly.
In 1946, when Hayes was just 18 years old, he and Georgina got married at the Anglican church in Banff.
The couple desperately wanted kids, but they were having trouble conceiving. With a small chuckle, Hayes said that “it wasn’t because of not trying.”
Finally, when he was in his early 20s, he and Georgina started the adoption process, eventually adopting their two children, Scott and Terry.
For years Hayes worked with the government, marketing Canada, and together he and Georgina travelled the world, visiting more than 50 different countries.
“I would come home and I would say ‘there’s an assignment,’ and she would say ‘I’ll be packed in a minute,”” Hayes recalled.
Hayes remembers a happy life of marriage. But, 20 years ago that was ripped away, when Georgina became ill.
“She got cancer, and in 56 days she was gone,” Hayes said, slipping into silence as he rubbed the corner of his eye with his finger.
He remembers that time in his life being “very, very hard.”
After a long silence, he said, “I talk to her a lot.”
He explained that most mornings he will get up and tell her good morning, as he looks at the framed picture of her on his wall. He is sure Georgina can hear him, and said he believes that sometimes she even responds.
“But my daughter thinks I’m nuts and so does my son.”
Every once in a while, when the pictures and memories aren’t quite enough, Hayes will take a trip to Banff, where Georgia is buried.
He went just last fall, heading to the old cemetery in the centre of town. Hayes said that he just wanted to pay her a visit, and remember all of the wonderful times they had together.
“I’ve had an incredible life,” he said.
Trevor Nichols
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